Calla lily
Zantedeschia aethiopica
Family · Araceae · Poisonous
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
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The calla lily, which came from South Africa and today fills ditches and stream banks in the Azores, Madeira and the mainland coast. It is beautiful, it is toxic, and it is invasive.
Streams and ditches · Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside
Also known asarum lily, lily of the Nile
How to tell it
A clump of large arrowhead leaves, dark green and glossy, on a long fleshy stalk. The flower is the mark: a pure white spathe rolled into a cone with the tip bent back, around a yellow finger. It always grows in waterlogged soil. A thick rhizome.
What it is confused with
Italian arum
Arum italicum
They are in the same family and share the piercing crystals. The native arum is far smaller, with a greenish white spathe and pale-veined leaves; the calla has a large pure white spathe. Neither is eaten.
Open sheet →What it is for
None. Like all aroids it holds needle-shaped calcium oxalate crystals: chewing any part closes the throat within minutes, and it is among the commonest household poisonings with garden plants, especially in children and cats. The rhizome was eaten in extreme famine after repeated boiling, and that is history.
The law says
A listed invasive alien species in Portugal. Do not plant it near watercourses and do not propagate it.